v

Hi there

I have a Century Hummingbird v.2, with the Lightning 4 radio that came part of the starter's kit. My question is: should you be able to set up the helicopter so that you can get at least 1 second's hover out of it without touching the (cyclical + rudder) controls?

I'm having quite some difficulty in trying to get the thing into a stable hover. I basically can't get it off the ground without applying some right rudder. And the trim is already adjusted maximally to the right.

Further, I have RealFlight G2, and I was wondering how what to expect in terms of comparing the real electric heli with the virtual Impala .30 gas heli. Right now what I'm finding is that flying my Hummingbird is about comparable in difficulty to flying the Impala upside down. Is this about what you should reasonably expect, or is there something wrong with the Hummingbird?

V

VinceHerman

No, I think you are experiencing the norm when it comes to micro heli behavior. Drift to the right on take off is normal. You balance it to fly in the air, not in ground effect.
There is very little comparison between how any sim feels and how flying a micro heli feels. The real thing is twitchy and challanging.
Hands off hover - How long can you balance a ball bearing on a bowling ball? By making small, smooth corrections, you can keep the ball bearing on top forever (with the same amount of practice that you have put into your heli). Stop for a moment and it rapidly gets so far off center that recovery is imposible. Oh, you can get it to hover hands off. I have done 5 or 6 seconds hands off a fair number of times. But this is on a heli that has been adjusted and tweaked to get well behaved perfomance.
As I often say, more than half of the challange that you have placed before yourself by taking up a Micro Heli is the complex task of setting up the heli to behave properly. Learning what tweaks affect behavior and how they do so is a big part of your learning curve. Being able to recognize problems and troubleshoot the cause is part of your goal.

Coasty

Amen!
One thing I've learned is that even small changes to balance and trim can make a hugh difference in how the thing flys.

v

I guess one of the issues that I'm facing, I can re-phrase as follows: Is there any way that I can make the tail rotor spin faster by default? I have the rudder trim set all the way to the right which is still not far enough, because I still have to manually push the rudder stick to the right in order for the helicopter to not spin counter clock wise all the time. I understand the idea that the heli *drifts* to the right before lift-off, but I don't think it should be *rotating* in any direction just before lift off.

werd

sounds like maybe your gyro isn't set properly??

VinceHerman

Ah, going back and re-reading your first post, I do see that you were describing yaw control.
Yes, if the tail is behaving poorly, then you will have a very difficult time with any sort of hover. I am less familiar with the HB board. I expect that it has a gain setting, and a mix/center setting. Have you experimented with these? Turn the gain up until the tail wags durning flight, and then back it off until the wag goes away. You will likely have to cycle power between each adjustment. What do the instructions say about the second setting? Does it use one of those bi-color LEDs?

bell1684

I totally agree with Vince...

Most of the learning curve with the Micro heli's(and all r/c heli's more or less) involves learning why/how to properly trim it out to get the best performance. I guess that is why learning to fly them is challenging, cause you have to learn how to trim at the same time you are trying to actually learn how to fly as well... it can be a mixed bag of success and frustration at the same time!!

Keep working with that Hbird..you'll love it when you finally get it trimmed up and working well. I can usually get 3-5 second "hands-off" hovers in my small 3'X3' living room area and its a blast!

Remember, heli trimming is a dynamic thing. its not a do it once thing and forget about it for a few days. But just like everything else the more you do something the easier it becomes.

Have fun!

coltech

I recently bought the same heli. If it is set up correctly you should get a couple of seconds of hands off hover before you need to take control. This won't work unless you get it at least 2 feet off the ground to get out of the air turbulence caused by your downdraught (ground effect or GE for short)

If you have the stock Century giro you should adjust the setup screw to get both led's ( red and green) lit together. Make sure you don't move the heli while you do this. The other screw is for gain and should be set at about 80% of max.

I own 3 micro helis at the moment and everyone of them drifts to the left as they take off. Looking from the back, the tail prop is facing right so when it spins it pushes the heli to the left. That's how I understand it works anyways.